Moyurakhkhi's Cigarettes

2| Milk Tea

July 8th, Day 38

"Well, that sucks," my cousin Fizz muttered after I finished ranting about Ma, whom I caught rummaging through my bag last night.

We sat in the cavernous school auditorium as our senior batch had their graduation ceremony.

 "I used to think that she trusts me! What the fuck was she expecting to find in there? Love letters? Drugs?" I sulked.

"Or maybe condoms? I saw Ammu forward a WhatsApp post about teen hormones to Kaki last night," she tentatively suggested. 

"Whatever it is, she almost found the cigarettes. There's no way I'm taking them back home."

Streams of cold air wafted down from the air conditioners, making my nose twitch. Behind the royal blue curtains, the Dance Club was preparing to perform. Tweaks and rustles slipped to us from the stage every now and then.

"Why don't you leave it with Deb?" Fizz asked. 

She'd been dating Debasish Chakma for nearly two years now. I was forced to go along on their dates so that Fizz's parents didn't find out she had a boyfriend, but Deb was a great friend to me and they fed me good food. They'd basically adopted me.

He shook his head. "Shubroto is always snooping around my room. He's been trying to blackmail me into buying him a PS5, that son of a-"

"Don't say that, your brother's the sweetest kid ever," Fizz said.

He made a face at her, tying up half of his long frizzy hair into a bun. "You could bribe Korim Kaka into hiding it," he suggested.

"No way," she said, bending down and tugging at her knee where the metal started. We were wearing sarees today after months. Mine was a romantic shade of blue, Fizz's was green and making moving around with the prosthetic hell for her.

"Yeah bro, her driver is the shiftiest guy I know, " I said. 

"You know who you can actually trust? Sahal. He's joining us later today," he said.

Sahal, the new guy in our class.

I groaned. "Again? Why does he have to hang out with us? He's your friend, not mine or Fizz's. And also there's no way I'm letting anybody from school know about this, much less him."

Fizz smacked my arm. "Why don't you like him?"

"I don't know, he just, irks me. I'm irked by him."

"Ho, ajaira," Fizz said. "Nonsense. He's literally so cute."

"Maybe you could ask him out, Mentos. For the cigarettes thing," Deb said. Fizz shook her head, overflowing with silky black hair, in uneasy agreement.

"You guys must be more desperate to get me a boyfriend than I am. He's the last person I'd ask out! He's always got his crooked teeth on display for no reason, especially around girls."

"You mean smiling?" 

"Yeah, whatever."

"It's called having charm, khanki," she said. Calling me a prostitute seemed to be her way of reaffirming our sisterhood.

"You're saying that 'cause you find him cute. If he was ugly you'd be calling him a creep," I said.

She smacked me again. "How will you ask out five guys if you're so critical? You have to win at this thing! Snagging Arsh's inheritance could be a perfect revenge." 

I scoffed. "What do you mean 'win'? And bro, he already has more money than he could spend in a lifetime of drowning in girls, drugs and alcohol."

"Wait..." Her eyebrows knit together. "Wait, you don't know?"